Today, the 28^th annual observance of World AIDS Day, Equality California Executive Director Rick Zbur issued the following statement:“This is a time of great promise.  For the first time in the history of the AIDS epidemic, treatments are available that can stem or even stop the spread of HIV.  Living with the virus itself is now a manageable long term condition rather than a debilitating and fatal disease.

But remember that for far too many people in the LGBT community, including in communities of color and around the world, that promise is still far off.  In the United States, transgender women are an estimated 49 times more likely to have HIV than the general population, and more than a fifth of them are, in fact, living with the virus.  The transmission rate in young gay men increased a staggering 132 percent between 2001 and 2011.  Millions around the world still have no access to life-saving therapies, including those without health coverage here at home.  And transmission of HIV is still a felony criminal offense in California and across the country, stigmatizing people with HIV and treating them more harshly than people with other communicable diseases.

Equality California is committed to the health and wellbeing of everyone in the LGBT community and ending stigma attached to having HIV.  We are working with a coalition of other LGBT and civil rights organizations to modernize laws that unfairly target people with HIV.  We are educating our community about the benefits and availability of pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP), which promises to end transmission of HIV.  And we are working to bring health coverage to everyone in California’s LGBT community, regardless of immigration status, so that each of us has an equal chance at a long, healthy life.

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Equality California is the nation’s largest statewide lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender civil rights organization dedicated to creating a fair and just society. Our mission is to achieve and maintain full and lasting equality, acceptance, and social justice for all people in our diverse LGBT communities, inside and outside of California. Our mission includes advancing the health and well-being of LGBT Californians through direct healthcare service advocacy and education. Through electoral, advocacy, education and mobilization programs, we strive to create a broad and diverse alliance of LGBT people, educators, government officials, communities of color and faith, labor, business, and social justice communities to achieve our goals. www.eqca.org